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Cowden, S., (2020) 'The Perils of Fundamentalism in France

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Cowden, S., (2020) 'The Perils of Fundamentalism in France Feminist Dissent The Perils of Fundamentalism in France Interview with Caroline Fourest by Stephen Cowden *Correspondence: s.cowden@ londonmet.ac.uk Caroline Fourest is a French feminist writer, film director, journalist, radio presenter at France Culture, and co-founder and editor of the magazine ProChoix. She has been a columnist with Charlie Hebdo and Le Monde and has written several influential essays on the political and religious right in France and the US. She is the author of a biography of the far-right politician Marine Le Pen and of a number of books including In Praise of Blasphemy: Why Charlie Hebdo is Not ‘Islamophobic’, Brother Tariq: the Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan and most recently The Offended Peer review: This article Generation. has been subject to a double blind peer review process Stephen Cowden teaches in the School of Social Professions at the London Metropolitan University. He is an editorial collective member of Feminist Dissent. © Copyright: The Authors. This article is issued under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non- Stephen Cowden (SC): Caroline, you’ve had a distinguished career of Commercial Share Alike License, which permits acting as investigative journalist into questions of religious use and redistribution of the work provided that fundamentalism. Could you tell us how you first got interested in those the original author and source are credited, the questions? work is not used for commercial purposes and that any derivative works Caroline Fourest (CF): Since the beginning, my interest about are made available under the same license terms. fundamentalism is connected to my interest in feminism and gender- based approaches. Because the first group I did work on was the Christian fundamentalist, and especially the anti-abortion movement, who were, at Cowden, Feminist Dissent 2020 (5), pp. 183-203 183 Feminist Dissent that time, very active in France, helping the National Front who were my, also, first big work. So, I moved really slowly to the study of all fundamentalism. For years, I only specialised in Christian fundamentalism, especially Catholic ones. SC: This was primarily Christian fundamentalism in France? Which you said is linked to the Front Nationale? CF: Yes. Then I did enlarge to the study of the Christian fundamentalism in France to include the USA, also the pro-life movement behind the election of George Bush. But after 9/11, it became more and more difficult to not work on all kinds of fundamentalism, especially because, for years, many of my Algerian friends told me, “But you need to focus also, Caroline, on what is going on in Algeria, where the Islamists are just basically killing us, and you only speak about Christian fundamentalism.” SC: What years are we talking about here around the Algerian situation? CF: It was the black years of the civil war between Islamists and democratic secularists (1991-2002), who were themselves in a very difficult situation because they had to accept the protection of the authoritarian regime, just to avoid being killed by the Islamists. So, it was basically the beginning of the inferno, and the nightmare, we are living since many years now, including in Europe. So, once 9/11 occurred, the only way to continue to be effective and useful on fundamentalism without fuelling the extreme right and the racist groups was to work on Islamism exactly the same way I did on Christian fundamentalism. SC: And how did you start doing this work? What was your early focus when you started doing this work on Islamist fundamentalism? Cowden, Feminist Dissent 2020 (5), pp. 183-203 184 Feminist Dissent CF: I wrote a book with Fiammetta Venner, who is a political scientist, named Crossfire1 which concerned the way secularism was under fire from Christian, Jewish and Muslim fundamentalism. We also compared them on the question of women’s rights, approach to the culture, gay rights, also terrorism of course. This study led us to say it’s not a question of religion, it’s not a question of culture, it’s rather a question of the political instrumentalisation of religion. This is the basic definition of fanaticism; what we call in France’ integrisme’, which is more precise. SC: Could you just tell us a bit more about what that term might mean for people outside France? CF: I know that in English the term used is basically ‘fundamentalism’, but this is only one sort of religious radicality. On the side of the practice, for example, you have orthodox Jews, you have Protestant fundamentalists, you have also Islamic fundamentalists. When we say ‘integriste’ in France, that means it’s not only that you are radical on the religious point of view, it’s that you are radical on the political view in the name of your religion. And that’s what I’m studying. I’m not interested in working on spiritualists, on some cults who want to retire from the world in a very dogmatic way. I’m interested in when the groups who sometimes can appear even less radical on the question of the practice of the faith, but, in fact, are more radical on the political impact, on the society. For example, if you compare the different branches of the Salafism today; there is a Salafism that is very orthodox, very purist in its practice, which can definitely lead some to Jihad. But some of these communities are living far from the society and are not getting involved in politics. Other more reformist Salafists can less fundamentalist, in the sense that they are trying to adapt their practice to society, so as to appear more modern. It is the case of the Muslim Brothers, for example, which is from my point of view, after 20 years studying those groups, the most dangerous Cowden, Feminist Dissent 2020 (5), pp. 183-203 185 Feminist Dissent politically. This is because they have a global strategy to destabilise many countries, many societies by many means, at the same time as being very smart and attractive in the media, using very soft, polite speech. They can be seductive, including for very smart students and people who are usually not attracted by radicality. And at the same time they are preparing groups of people to be ready to fight for their cause, which involves them being very aggressive and intimidating toward any secularist Muslims who are in front of them. My theory is that they are the most dangerous because they are the most active in fighting secular and peaceful Islam in Europe. SC: Okay. Let me just take you back a bit to thinking about how we might define what we call fundamentalism. And I think you made a really interesting point there, that some of the most pernicious forms of religious fundamentalism that you’re talking about within Islam are not necessarily strictly orthodox, they are not necessarily interested in the highly orthodox practice, but they are much more interested in politics? So if we’re trying to characterise the relationship between what we might call religious fundamentalism and what we might call loosely ‘mainstream religion’, how might we think about that relationship? CF: I think we have to go back also to a very simple test that a part of the left is forgetting when it is about religion these days. It is that in every culture, religion, political movements, there are progressive and there are reactionary elements. Fanatics, fundamentalists, integristes, whatever you want to call them - when their fundamental interest is in the political, they are more than reactionary. This is because they want to bring about a big backlash for all of the society where they are living. And their first victims, and first targets are definitely the secular Muslims. These are the Muslims who want to practice their faith, or sometimes who are just born in a Muslim culture without practicing the religion and want to live in a modern society like everyone, like every citizen, who suddenly find themselves at the centre of a campaign of intimidation, blamed for being Cowden, Feminist Dissent 2020 (5), pp. 183-203 186 Feminist Dissent ‘false Muslims’, the “wrong sort” of Muslims, “collaborating with modern society”, etc. And this war really is a war because it is a battle over freedom of speech. In the name of being offended, the most reactionary representatives of a community can silence the most progressive, the one who is open minded and open especially to the critics of the religion. So, this is where the cultural battle for me is the most important, more than the fight against terrorism. Because terrorism will end one day, it will take time, because when ISIS is down, Al Qaeda will be back again and other groups will be back again. But as long as we don’t have this broader and more expansive view of how these forms of politics emerge within the cultural and intellectual background of this fanaticism, we won’t solve it. SC: What you’ve said there might be thought by many people as a reversal of how these things are usually thought about, right across the political spectrum, from the left to the right. Most people and most government policy is focussed on the fight against terrorism. Are you saying that the ‘cultural battle’ is more important than the fight against terrorism? CF: Of course I’m saying that both are necessary, and if we don’t stop terrorist attacks we will lose the cultural battle, alongside the way these events fuel racism, hate, anger. So it’s important that there is, at least, the minimum in democracy, a sort of national consensus in every country of modern society that wants to live in peace, about fighting terrorism.
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